


What's In A Name

by on_my_toes



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, enjonine - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:18:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037574
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/on_my_toes/pseuds/on_my_toes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"You told me your name was Cosette." </p><p>One-shot. Enjolras is a man of his word. Éponine is not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's In A Name

“Can I tell you something?” 

She doesn’t wait for his permission. She lifts herself just slightly from the mattress, and he rolls over to accommodate the shift in her small frame. 

“My name is Eponine.” 

There is a hesitant smile curving on one side of her lip, so he thinks she is kidding. Then she lifts her body further from the mattress, and the faint light from the window pours into the cracks of her, into the pores of her nose and the too dark lashes that frame her eyes like a bruise. The longer he is quiet, the more crooked the smile becomes, like he is a game she is playing and she unexpectedly has the upper hand. 

He realizes then that she probably isn’t joking. “Eponine,” he repeats, and she nods, just once. 

“I lied to you.” 

She is brazen and confident, unbothered by her own nakedness, lifting herself further so that he sees her sharp, unyielding curves, the fading bruises and the old scars. She doesn’t expect him to be angry. He thinks maybe this is the root of all her problems: she wanders in and out of people’s lives, taking and giving whatever she pleases, but there is not one drop of grudging blood in her veins. She is never upset, she is never disappointed. There is no threshold of expectation, no standard she expects anyone to meet. 

He hasn’t known her very long, but she has known her long enough to understand this. And so he finds that he is not angry. He does not reach for her, he does not ask her why, he just stares and drinks in the skin of this girl who has asked for nothing from him and taken everything in one fell swoop. 

She leans in. She is not looking for forgiveness. The dark lashes are sinking, her lids sleepy and certain as she moves forward, poised to kiss his brow. 

He stops her gently, combing his fingers through her unruly hair. 

“You told me your name was Cosette,” he says, without accusation, without hurt. 

She is so close to his face that the edges of her are a blur. She blinks hard, and then a smile spreads on her face like it is leaking, unintentional and sheepish. Her legs are still coiled around him and he feels the muscle tighten just for an instant before she leans all the way in for the kiss. 

Her lips are warm on his forehead. She is incongruously intimate, for someone as reckless as she is. 

When she speaks again her voice is rough and low: “I suppose I wanted to feel beautiful.” 

There is nothing vulnerable in her confession. She says it so simply, so steadily, that it takes him a moment to understand the implication, and another moment still to react. By then she is kissing him again, hungry and impatient—she has never had much use for words, she is all hands and limbs and secret smiles, a bolder and brasher kind of language that he has not yet mastered. 

He is a man of words. Words are tools and words are weapons, meant to persuade and inspire and manipulate. But there is no coherency here, only tangles and sweat and warm skin. 

She is not beautiful. He wants to be able to tell her that she is, but the words feel false and stilted before they can leave his tongue. She is not beautiful, but she is so much more than that. She is fearless and gritty and wry, she is spilled coffee and chewed up sweater sleeves and smoke, she is unapologetic and simple and boundless all at the same time. 

He feels for her in the darkness, his palms and fingertips pressing against bare flesh and bone, and tries to say this to her in a language she understands. He kisses her more fiercely, he pulls her against him until her body lays flat on his and then he pulls tighter still, grazing the uneven plane of her, christening each and every imperfection with a kind of reverence he thought he could never spare for another human being. 

Her back arches in response. Her eyes are wide and hungry and fixed on his. It is almost too intense to bear. 

He is breathless by the time he finds the words that he needs: “I think,” he says, gasping through his teeth, “that the name Eponine suits you just fine.”


End file.
